NHS AfC:
Band 7ContractPermanentHoursFull time - 37.5 hours per week Job ref914-BSA7032903 SiteStella HouseTownNewcastle Upon TyneSalary£46,148 - £52,809 per annumSalary periodYearlyClosing06/04/2025 23:59
Job overview
Here at NHS Business Services Authority, we have a growing digital agenda. An opportunity has arisen for a Lead Developer to join our Digital, Data and Technology Directorate.
As a Lead Developer, you will provide expert knowledge within the software development community to actively develop, implement and enable on-going support of services. You will lead and enable the growth of skills within the team.
This is a perfect opportunity for someone who has a passion for software development, an eye for detail and experience working collaboratively within a multi-disciplinary team setting. You will also have experience of working with Java/Spring in a professional environment.
You will lead on exciting projects which will make a difference. You will work closely with stakeholders, forming a deep understanding of customer and organisational requirements, translating requirements into user stories to create deliverable features.
What do we offer?
• Hybrid working – offering flexibility to work predominantly from home with the opportunity to be office based should you prefer, or if business needs require it.
• 27 days leave (increasing with length of service) plus 8 bank holidays.
• Opportunities for development
• Active wellbeing and inclusion networks
• Excellent pension
• Various salary sacrifice schemes
• Employee Assistance programme, offering free 24/7 support for you and your loved ones
• Access to a wide range of benefits and high street and online discounts
Main duties of the job
1. Analysis of requirements, design and development of applications to meet business needs.
2. Analysis, investigation and resolution of complex ICT issues, within new and existing services.
3. Software development lifecycle, including but not limited to developing code based applications, quality assurance and test processes, and supporting in a 2nd/3rd line environment.
4. Rapidly absorbing highly complex technical and business information.
Identifying risks and escalating them as appropriate.
5. Writing and maintaining system documentation.
Working for our organisation
Here at the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), what we do matters.
We manage the NHS Pension scheme, process prescription payments and much more. Our services are used by NHS organisations, contractors and the public: we take pride in being part of something so meaningful, that touches millions of lives.
Just as we design our services around the needs of our customers, we place our people at the heart of our organisation. That’s why when you join us, you’ll be empowered and given the right support to help your career grow.
As one of the UK’s Best Big Companies to work for, we’re all connected to our values: Collaborative, Adventurous, Reliable and Energetic. We care about our people, our purpose, and your progress.
We strive to offer a fantastic colleague experience, where every voice is heard, and every colleague is supported and respected. Wellbeing, diversity and inclusion is at the centre of this, so when you join us, you can connect with our Lived Experience Networks who help us to bring our authentic selves to work.
We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and circumstances. We are committed and proud to be a flexible employer and will endeavour to offer a working pattern that suits you wherever possible, whether that be hybrid working, flexible hours, job sharing and more.
Ready to join us on our journey to be a catalyst for better health? Apply today and see where the NHSBSA can take you.
We are people connected to care.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
In this role, you are accountable for
Specialist skills
1. Evaluating, analysing, and interpreting highly complex information and requirements to inform development of applications and services, providing options to support a range of solutions.
2. Communicating with other IT professionals to provide detailed and highly complex information in easy to understand formats.
3. Applying specialist knowledge, defining and applying appropriate methods and procedures throughout the full development lifecycle in accordance with IT standards and customer requirements.
4. Designing, developing and delivering systems and services that provide value based features and benefits for new and existing services.
5. Redesigning, re-factoring and innovatively delivering modernisation of existing services, in a creative and timely manner.
6. Provide specialist advice and guidance for resolving complex issues that affect bespoke services, third-party applications and configurable of the shelf products (CoTS) and services, to support swift resolution of problems and major incidents.
7. Using incident, problem, request and change management processes and systems to support the successful implementation of system enhancements and fault resolutions, in a timely manner.
8. Implementing standards and policies, pro-actively identifying and proposing improvements or enhancements to meet changing needs.
9. Proactively engaging in conversations to support the on-going development and maintenance of your own skills and knowledge, including attending relevant Communities of Practice.
10. Communicating complex information effectively across a wide range of people and levels of understanding, including both technical and nontechnical audiences, to influence, negotiate and secure value based outcomes for the delivery of services.
11. Planning work of own and other team members to achieve agreed objectives, prioritising multiple and sometimes conflicting deliverables, escalating as appropriate, any issues which may impact deadlines.
12. Leading, participating and contributing to quality assurance reviews of your and others work through a variety of approaches such as peer review, learning logs, and engaging in appropriate communities of practice.
13. Regularly horizon scans to keep abreast of new and emerging technologies and standards to support innovative and creative delivery of business objectives.
Staff
14. Undertake and support relevant recruitment and selection in line with organisational processes.
15. Train, mentor, and coach other team members, and apprentices to enable the on-going personal development and growth of skills within the team.
16. Co-ordinates and allocates work to other team members in line with agreed delivery of services
Financial Management
17. Maintain an awareness of financial and personal implications in the use of a range of resources.
18. Contribute to and prepare proposals for change including producing necessary estimates, mandates and business cases within the technology department.
Relationship Management
19. Identifying opportunities and engaging in partnership working with other individuals, groups and agencies within the NHS, DoH and other third parties.
20. Effectively engage and collaborate across multiple disciplines to ensure consistent approaches, methods, standards, and patterns are holistically applied.
Information Management
21. Maintaining an awareness of agreed service levels, KPI's and standards within team, reviewing own performance and adapt own approach to maximise the delivery to support and meet agreed standards.
22. Monitoring and reporting on a number of areas including agreed service levels, KPI's and standards within team, generating reports to agreed frequency, methods and processes.
Delivery Management
23. Preparing plans to enable the delivery and management of projects and programmes undertaken by the team. Providing operational direction in the preparation of plans to deliver systems and service across the organisation.
24. Proactively identify challenges that may affect delivery, providing mitigating actions and a decisive response.
25. Providing feedback on functional and non-functional requirements to ensure the overall needs of the business are met from an ICT perspective, participating in procurement processes as required.
Person specification
Personal Qualities, Knowledge and Skills
Essential criteria
6. Working collaboratively within a multi-disciplinary team setting, both internal and externally.
7. Management of own work and others work to meet deliverables.
8. Pro-active approach to self-learning and continuous professional development.
9. Specialist knowledge consistent with attainment of degree level qualifications.
10. Business change and rationalisation of systems processes and services.
11. Analysis of requirements, design and development of applications to meet business needs.
12. Analysis, investigation and resolution of complex ICT issues, within new and existing services to enable business continuity and resolve major incidents.
13. Use of version control systems such as Github/Gitlab, SVN
14. Knowledge of design principles (Object oriented design; common design patterns; responsive web design; security by design; government service design)
15. Experience of frameworks and approaches to support DevOps culture and a Continuous Deployment environment.
16. Experience of translating requirements into user stories to create deliverable features.
Desirable criteria
17. Awareness of digital channel shift and approaches
18. Working knowledge of cloud, Windows and Unix environments
19. Microservices design and implementation
Experience
Essential criteria
20. Extensive knowledge of software development lifecycle, including but not limited to developing code based applications, quality assurance and test processes, and supporting in a 2nd/3rd line environment.
21. Extensive knowledge of one or more of the following: Agile, Java/Spring, Node.js/Express, AWS Lambda, HTML/ CSS/ JavaScript, SQL.
22. Significant Experience of performing a range of varied work activities in a range of structured and unstructured environments.
23. Communicating complex technical information easily to both technical and non-technical people.
24. Training, mentoring, coaching and sharing best practice with a range of staff.
25. Rapidly absorbing highly complex technical and business information to learn new technologies keep skills up to date and adapt to change.
26. Identifying risks and escalating them as appropriate.
27. Writing and maintaining system documentation.
28. Developing and maintaining clean, production ready code across a variety of programming languages and frameworks.
29. Presenting work at user groups and conferences
30. Meeting strict service requirements (KPIs, SLAs, OLAs)
31. Front-end web development skills
32. Create or design workable prototypes.
33. Experience building server-side web applications
Desirable criteria
34. Developing or supporting large scale or highly critical services.
35. Upgrading, converting, modernising or digitising applications/services.
36. Identifying, assessing and managing risk.
37. Knowledge of SQL and its use in one or more DBMS (Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, DB2).
38. Interaction with a range of external, third party suppliers
39. Experience of GDS type design principles in action – “coding in the open”
40. Responsive Web Design and handling large data sets and scaling their handling and storage.
Qualifications
Essential criteria
41. Degree calibre with relevant in-depth knowledge of the subject matter OR
42. Relevant experience of the subject matter
Desirable criteria
43. Qualifications in appropriate IT certification (eg ITIL, TOGAF, Agile, ISTQB etc)
44. Post Graduate qualification
The NHSBSA is passionate about creating a diverse and inclusive organisation, which is a great place to work and truly reflects the diversity of our customers. We welcome applications from talented people of diverse characteristics including age, disability, gender identity and expression, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or any marginalised group. We also welcome applications from all those in the Armed Forces Community.
At the NHSBSA we pride ourselves on being a Disability Confident Leader, Stonewall Top 100 employer and we’ve recently been awarded the Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion Gold Standard benchmark.
We offer an invitation to the first stage of the selection process for people with disabilities that wish to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme, and for members of the Armed Forces Community, where all of the essential criteria in the person specification are met.
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